During my professional life working for Multinationals I’ve seen many job titles that should be ditched and never used again. Simply because these job titles don’t create any accountability or management responsibility on the employees but, instead, show only a kind of ranking or classification and can create frustrated and demotivated people in the long run. I can point out 3 examples that, in many cases (there’s always some exceptions), are an attempt of keeping one person motivated (or semi), without paying properly for the Management position but demanding more from him/her, without giving him/her the full responsibility over the teams decisions and (positive or negative) results. Let’s analyse the 3 situations:
1. Supervisor
What’s a supervisor? A supervisor, as the name says, should be someone that is able to have an overview of the process and give instructions/guidelines to someone on how to act. Ultimately I see a supervisor as the one that is “whistleblowing” to the one above his/her when someone is not following the guidelines. I can only remember my old times in the primary school when the teacher had to leave the class and used to ask to one pupil (usually a very good student)to supervise all the others. This pupil wasn’t a teacher but during those few minutes felt like such. However he/she was still a pupil like me or any other. Another situation was during the exams periods where there were not enough teachers to control the exam rooms and an employee of the school was “invited” to supervise the exam. This employee wasn’t a teacher but during that Exam felt like such. When the Exam ended, this person was stepping down for the temporary teacher’s dream and was back to his admin tasks.
And now the question is: In one Company, what’s the need of having someone like this? What’s the need of someone that is not accountable for a Department or Team but, instead, is responsible to have an overview and give guidelines? Who’s in charge then? The Director? The President? Who should be telling clearly what is required from the others and follow it up properly? A Supervisor shouldn’t have among his/her tasks any of these ones. Nevertheless, it looks like the Companies are demanding from the Supervisor the same responsibilities that from a Manager, without giving him/her publicly the title of Manager.
2. Coordinator
This solution is also usually bad and not helping to have an effective and professional Management of a Company and the people involved. As I did above regarding the position of “Supervisor” let’s try to analyse what a Coordinator is: A coordinator is someone who coordinates (like Monsieur de La Palice would say). But this is right. And coordinate means, according to the Oxford Dictionary, “bring the different elements of (a complex activity or organization) into a harmonious or efficient relationship”. This is great and all the Organizations should work in harmonious relationship. Fantastic statement!!! But is this a job?! Is “Coordination” a full job in an usual Commercial Company? It is not. It can be a temporary task on a task force or on a Project but a Coordinator is not (or shouldn’t be) accountable for any result other than putting the elements together and make them work. If something is wrong in the strategy or anything not planned happens, there must be some Manager around to be called to the top management to answer the right questions and find solutions that can satisfy the hierarchy.
This is what a Coordinator should be.
However, and like in the previous situation, many Companies are not using this title properly and using it in hybrid situations where the Management doesn’t want to promote properly a certain employee for different reasons that we’ll analyse later on.
3. Senior
In modern English the word “Senior” means only “Older” than other or an “Experienced” person. Etymologically the word “Senior” has its origin in the Latin where it means the superlative of “senex” which means old. Telling it in another way, “Senior” means a rank more than a responsibility, job or task.
In this case, the question is again: What’s the need for a Company to have and show rankings of age or seniority (in current English) rather than levels of responsibility and/or accountability?!
Behind the attribution of all the above “titles”, assuming only the cases they are wrongly given, there are a few reasons that are worthwhile to mention and try to understand. The reason the Managers are giving employees such titles can be one of the following (or more than one combined):
a) “Egos” Management.
This is probably the most common cause of the wrong or misleading nominations. In all organizations there are “egos” to manage and people to please. Some of them are considered really key for the Company for any certain reason but, most of all, they are considered indispensable or needed is due to their knowledge or expertise in certain areas of the Business. These people know that they are key for the Manager keep presenting positive results and, with the time, they create a kind of psychological pedestal for themselves from where is difficult to step down and keep being humble and doing their job properly just for the sake of doing their job properly.
Many Managers fall on this trap just to please their “key” people (not very key indeed but we leave this for another post) and to gain a bit of peace on the “lock room” as said in the soccer jargon. This peace is however short termed by the same “Ego” of the person as all of the three titles as such are not giving the employees any power or accountability. Therefore the frustration of the employee and the troubles for the Manager is unavoidable in the long run.
b) Keep OPEX low.
The Operating Expenses (OPEX) are one of the most important KPI to keep under control in the Modern Organizations. More than under control, Companies need to have some flexibility on OPEX as they need to be quickly bendable in case the sales start dropping. With the current labour laws in most of the countries the flexibility in Personnel OPEX are low. This is taking many Managers to keep a very tight policy of promotions and nominations to new and higher positions within the Organization.
However it’s not possible keep everyone on the same level as the boat need at least rowers, team leaders and a captain. This means that sometimes the Managers need to “create” some positions to keep the organization running but without getting into bigger wages and, at the same time, keeping the hierarchy pretty flat.
This could work well in the short term again but, as time goes by, the employee will feel that he/she is doing tasks and taking risks and decisions that should be taken by a Manager, paid as a Manager. We can easily envisage a situation of frustration and a demotivated employee once again.
c) Attempt of motivation.
Linked to the first point (“Egos” Management) giving such titles as an attempt of Motivation is clearly a bad decision. When a Manager needs to motivate people and is not able to do it in any other way (including salary increase) creates such unevenness positions to try and do it. However this is wrong because at the end of the day the employee will feel that this was a smoke a mirror solution and that he/she is still on the same professional situation than in the past but with a “fancier” title. The others will detect it immediately but the person in question will only realize it later. And then the frustration and lack of motivation will take over again.
d) Doubts about the Management skills of an employee.
When a Manager is not totally convinced of the skills of one employee and, for any reason, doesn’t want to hire another person to take the lead of the team, usually takes the decision of “promoting” this employee to one of the mentioned titles.
As we can understand this is not working well either. And the reason is twofold: on one hand the person that is now “promoted” will understand that, having a vacant position to fill, is not being invited to occupy the place. On the other hand the other piers will easily understand that this person is not the “old” Manager they used to have and will not respect the new “leader” as such.
In this case all of the people will end up frustrated and the performance of the team will become obviously poorer and poorer.
In summary, all of the above titles are usually (again, there are many and good exceptions) not leading to any good long term business solutions. Managers that are afraid to take clear decisions on the people’s positions and create such different levels within an Organization are bringing to the Company a time bomb that will end up exploding and creating more negative than positive effects on their people. And even if this bomb will never explode because the people fear to lose their job and remain quiet on the position, these decisions are not showing a huge respect for the employee and, at the end of the day, are not providing the team with a motivated person to help the whole group reaching the expected results.
The Flying Cow 